UPDATE: Forecast humor on steroids, here
You can’t make up FAIL like this. First this story in the BBC Today:
Now let’s have a look at the official Met Office forecast for April, issued on March 23rd, 2012:
Met Office 3-month Outlook
Period: April – June 2012 Issue date: 23.03.12
SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier than average conditions for April-May-June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months. With this forecast, the water resources situation in southern, eastern and central England is likely to deteriorate further during the April-May-June period. The probability that UK precipitation for April-May-June will fall into the driest of our five categories is 20-25% whilst the probability that it will fall into the wettest of our five categories is 10-15% (the 197-2000 climatological probability for each of these categories is 20%).
CONTEXT:
As a legacy of dry weather over many months water resources in much
of southern, eastern and central England remain at very low levels.
Winter rainfall in these areas has typically been about 70% of average,
whilst observations and current forecasts suggest that the final totals for
March will be below average here too. The Environment Agency advises
that, given the current state of soils and groundwater levels in these
areas, drought impacts in the coming months are virtually inevitable.
Read the entire forecast here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/p/i/A3-layout-precip-AMJ.pdf
Saved copy here: Met_Office_A3-layout-precip-AMJ
Obviously, the power sucking supercomputer they recently put online needs to be bigger.
It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.
GIGO me thinks. This isn’t the first time this has happened:
Met Office admits they botched snow warning
And then there’s the BBQ summer fiasco, which prompted replacement of the seasonal forecasts with the shorter term one you see above:
Met Office ends season forecasts – no more “BBQ summers”
Maybe they should stick to DART (Digital Advanced Reckoning Technology) which can do the job of making forecasts equally well, using less power, less space, and less money: 
h/t to Charles the Moderator and Adrian Kerton over at CA in comments.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
A few things to say:
1. There has been a dry spell here for 2 years – that’s true.
2. The forecast was rubbish but Piers Corbyn also said the SE would be very dry – he got that bit wrong too, so don’t simply rubbish the BBC without context – those who disagree with them were also not perfect.
3. Here in the UK our strange water system doesn’t self-right itself with a few good dousings – we aren’t like the US or Australia where the water storage areas come from huge run-off areas. So although we have now righted our soil issues, it will take longer for the groundwater- and reservoir supplies to replenish – they are right about that.
4. What’s ridiculous though is that the water companies were privatised, sold on to foreign owners who only care about profits and hence some of the reservoirs were sold off, dried out and used to build houses, which of course reduces our water supplies precisely in the areas most in need of them.
What is actually a scandal, more than this pathetic weather forecast, is the state of british planning for water security. We are a nation blessed with a climate which should mean we have little problems, but due to abominable planning, lax education and wasteful usage, we are short.
That’s not the Met Office’s fault, nor the BBCs!
I live in Epsom Surrey.
Unitl the water companies were privatised there was a filtration plant in the town and one of the first action was to destroy it, not mothball, as it was not needed. This has happened in several areas. This means that not only has there been no action taken to increase water storage there has also been a reduction in treatment. Double whammy less water more polution Trebles all round in the boardrooms though
The main difference between the north of the UK and the south east is that the SE mainly uses underground aquifers which are replenished by groundwater seepage, whereas the rest of the country mainly uses reservoirs. A sudden downpour will refill a reservoir but not an aquifer.
Stop Press! Latest Met. Office Long Range 30 Day Forecast.
The whole country should prepare for variable periods of wet/dry, cool/warm and calm/windy weather.
This forecast was compiled using expert interpretation of computer weather simulations and some old pine cones.
Warming causes cold. Drought means rain. Haven’t you people been paying attention?
Average Winter Rainfall 1960 – 1989 for South East England is 190 mm (or so my Excel spreadsheet says)
Rainfall for Winter 2011 was 185.5 mm
Rainfall for Winter 2012 was 160.8 mm
So it was not really “very dry” for the past 2 winters. I make it about 8% less rainfall than average.
Source http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/download.html
Which shows again that the GCM models are useful only to forecast several days in advance but are missing the real drivers for long term forecast – not to talk about regional climate or global.
Interesting to see that Piers Corbyn does a much better job using solar-lunar drivers.
Here his analysis of the April forecats:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=9528
Lets see if his May forecast comes as precisely true as many other did before, I understand he has an accuracy of 85%:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=9461&linkbox=true&position=9
I’d laugh. But it’s my taxes supporting these half-baked, half-witted morons at both the Marxist Broadcasting Corporation and Met Office.
Maybe the Met Office super computer should be powered only from wind, then 30% of the time it would be off.
The key, of course, is dams and engineering. Brits used to be the supreme masters of civil engineering, now they’ve completely forgotten.
Makes me thankful for FDR’s foresight, and for the continuity of agencies like TVA and Bonneville in preserving FDR’s legacy despite the encroachments of “green” power and the murderously anti-scientific “”””Endangered”””” “”””Species”””” laws.
Also thankful that America didn’t privatize its local water systems, which is part of Britain’s present problem.
Awww, don’t disrespect weather forecasting supercomputers. It’s not their fault. Really, they just do what they are told. In the case of solving problems like this, well, they are hard problems — chaotic problems, in fact. But it may well be a case of GIGO as well — the weather modellers are having a hard time dealing with the 7% increase in global bond albedo. That’s a 7% increase in daytime cloudiness, which makes it both cooler and wetter (on average) on the ground. If they set their assumptions for cloud formation incorrectly, of course they will get precipitation wrong.
This is actually an interesting point, one possibly worth pursuing. The failure of even short term weather models like this one (which is hardly a “global climate model”) to even get the sign right on comparative April rainfall let alone predict an extreme event should be a warning flag that the model being used is either flawed from the beginning or, more likely, incorrectly parameterized in some way. A very real question is then: what values of the parameters (set back in March) would give you the right forecast for April? Would they give you better overall hindcast or forecast results?
Personally I think weather forecasting and reporting is one of the most valuable services provided by any government. Everybody has a bet on the weather, if only whether or not their fishing trip over the weekend will come off. Farmers bet far more, and our food supply depends on the accuracy and utility of forecasts and reporting. IIRC, Anthony himself is in the business, as is Roy Spencer. So let us not disrespect forecasters or weathermen (or their computers!) in general, let us simply gently speculate on the importance of fixing the models after a spectacular fail like this one, or at the very least investigating what went wrong and determining if it is a chaos-related fluke (a vagrant high pressure center that locked down unexpectedly) or if it is a systematic error.
rgb
I wish weather offices would stay our of the business of prediction based on biases toward the warming earth. Governments should stay out of the Green subsiduy business too, since governments NEVER know what they are doing. Ontario’s economy is ruined due to Liberal green policies.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/gwyn-morgan/the-sorry-lessons-of-green-power-subsidies/article2417284/
The MET are just an embarrassment. Most of us in the UK have been aware of this forecast against the reality for some time, we were just too ashamed to tell you. After all it’s our taxes which pay for it, why should we show you our data, when you only want to find fault?
Lew Skannen says:
April 30, 2012 at 11:35 pm
By the way, under Australian Government Naming Convention we don’t refer to it as ‘water’ anymore.
It is ‘hydrogen pollution’.
——————
It’s dihydrogen monoxide. In it’s more dangerous form, when it collects in large doses it is called Hydrogen Hydroxide, it’s a major pollutant and kills thousands each year.
There is a US movement on to ban dihydrogen monoxide. For our children. For our world. For our future. Please donate.
@Paul Martin “A sudden downpour will refill a reservoir but not an aquifer.”
I would have thought so too. But apparently not.
This from “The Times”.
“Water companies insist that the downpours have failed to fill reservoirs (and aquifers)”
So the obvious question is “Why not”?
Is it because they are more concerned with paying their “fat cat” CEO’s and overseas investors large sums of ££££, whilst failing to expand infrastructure?
It’s what I love about “random walk” phenomenon. I imagine there are hundreds of minds at work right now trying to figure out how to have predicted this downpour so they do a better job “next time”. Does anyone else get that it is a fool’s bet to predict “random walk” phenomenon? Many here predicted “cold” due to a quiet Sun. Others on AGW leaning blogs predict warmth as CO2 continues to climb. Put them all in a single room and I would not know how to tell solar theorists from CO2 theorists.
Another major reason for the “drought” is that despite a 7% increase in population in London and the South East since 2001, no new reservoirs have been built for over 40 years in the Thames region and in fact 25 water storage reservoirs have been closed.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5ifZBOpWOg4huOJqwDYt5_f0xzAMw?docId=N0008081335809035803A
So can the drought be attributed more to management than climate?
My wife and I went to a friends wedding in Belfast many years ago, our friend was a met officer working at an RAF station in Scotland and marring a local girl. I asked him on the morning of the wedding what he thought the weather would be like, he stood and looked out the window for a couple of minutes and then he covered just about everything strong breeze, rain showers, snow flurries and sunny spells. And he was right the wind blew all day, the sun shone as we arrived in church, it rained heavily whilst we were in church, the sun came out as we left the church and we had a short snow fall as we drove to the reception ready for the sun to make another appearance as we arrived at the venue and it did a full resume during the do for it to clear for the departure of the happy couple.
My admiration of his abilities was immense.
James Bull
So, if the supercomputer is programmed to factor in increasing warmth due to Co2, and it’s forecasts (predictive value) are incorrect, ……
david brown says:
April 30, 2012 at 11:34 pm
actually increased rainfall can only come from increased global heat. seeing it is heat that creates evaporation. drought or flood both mean the planet is warming. worst rain in a 100 years? gee the planet is warming up faster than i thought
————————————————————-
That’s why it’s always raining in the desert.
If these scientists were real they would admit their prediction wrong, state why they predicted drought in the first place and then revisit their modeling program to see where they went wrong, eventually making all of this public with the goal of better predicting.
Anthony – the forecast you refer to was not issued March 12, 2012 but March 23, 2012, which makes it MUCH worse – a little over a week before April started!
REPLY: Typo fixed, thanks – A
Did Gore visit the Met offices? That would explain it. But looking back at the track record of “asleep at the switch” in the UK we see the regulatory failure behind the Titanic life boat count when the size of the ships tripled and the life boat regs did not and then there was the mad cow disease where other nations banned the use of ground up diseased brains as animal feed and the regulators went along asleep at the switch again until reality bit. In this case the train wreck of taking no action when incompetent conditions call for it will lead to lower nation wealth attainment and more costs of policy disfunction related to Met advice. In summary, stop eating the mad cow and do some real reform!
Does it help that the Met Office supercomputer provides both Climate and Weather predictions? Does the warming bias programmed in for climate predictions lead to warming bias in weather predictions?
It seems that weather forecast accuracy is measured considering all predictions. If a weather forecast was set to always predicting average conditions a forecaster would no doubt claim that their forecast model is accurate – most of the time average conditions happen!
Surely weather forecast accuracy should only be measured on the success of the forecaster predicting major deviations. After all, we generally are looking at forecasts to provide warnings of extreme weather. The evidence suggests the Met Office fail rate on predicting major deviations is very high – so the value of their forecasts would seem to be minimal.
The Met Office are lobbying the government to provide more funds to build a new super duper climate / weather computer. Surely the warming bias has to be addressed before these funds are released?
Pamela Gray says:
May 1, 2012 at 6:31 am
Once again, go ahead and explain it all to us then, …..
I gotta say, these posts are a hoot! Funniest ever.
Nice way to start the day off here in S. California, where we have drizzling fog, aka “May Grey.”